


rise up and salute the sun

by boasamishipper



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: First Meetings, Jelly Tarts, Misunderstandings, Pajamas & Sleepwear, Pre-Series, Soren is trying his best, The West Wing References, based on the west wing episode 'take this sabbath day', hangovers, not canonically accurate at all but fun anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 20:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16070789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boasamishipper/pseuds/boasamishipper
Summary: In which there are hangovers, dragon-print pajamas, and a misunderstanding or two.





	rise up and salute the sun

“Sor-bear.”

A pause.

“Soren.”

Another pause.

“Soren!”

Quick as a flash, Soren’s hand flies up to grab Claudia by the wrist. Unfortunately he misses and ends up grasping at thin air for a few seconds before returning his arm to his side. Maybe if he’d opened his eyes he’d have made contact, but since he feels like he’d been trampled by every horse in the kingdom, he senses that opening his eyes isn’t happening anytime soon. “Shh,” he mutters. “Lower your...mouth siren.”

He can practically _feel_ his little sister’s unimpressed stare. “Are you drunk?”

“No.” _I wish. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel this awful._ “I went out with some of the knights last night,” he says. Ha. Knights last night. That’s funny. He makes a mental note to tell that to his fellow knights once they wake up and crawl out of the alleyway they’d all passed out in. “There...may have been some drinking.”

“Soren, you know you have a delicate system.”

He opens his eyes, and Claudia’s expression painfully swims into view. Still, he’s not about to stand for that. Even if he is currently slumped against the wall outside his father’s office. “No I don't,” he says, hoping that he sounds a lot more confident than he feels. “I can handle myself just fine.”

“You’re wearing your pajamas.”

Soren looks down at himself. Huh. So he is. He does vaguely remember changing out of his armor before coming into the castle this morning, but he’d assumed he’d had the foresight to change into actual clothing, not his dragon-print jammies. Oh well. At least they’re comfortable. “What do you want, Claudia?”

“You know how Dad has that super important meeting later this week?”

“Sure.” Viren had only been talking about it for the last three days straight. “The one with the head general.”

“Well…” Claudia stretches out the word like a piece of chewing gum, giving it at least ten more syllables than it needs. “I just got a messenger hawk and I found out that the super important meeting was getting moved up to today and I gotta go find Dad and tell him before the general gets here and can you stay here until I get back?”

Soren blinks. “Uh—”

“Great, thanks!” Claudia throws her arms around him in a quick hug before sprinting off down the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “Be right back!”

Well. Okay then. Soren presses a hand to his forehead and walks into the office, collapsing behind the desk. It’s a pretty comfortable desk, actually. Not as comfortable as his bed, but still nice. He rests his head against the wood, closing his eyes and enjoying how cool it feels against his skin.

_I’ll just stay like this for a few minutes._

_Just a few minutes._

_Just a few..._

“Are you the unmitigated jackass that’s been talking to King Harrow about cutting off funding for the military of Katolis?”

Soren’s eyes snap open.

For a moment, all he can do is blink blearily and try to get his bearings even though it feels like his head is going to split open from the sheer volume of this interruption. Still, he makes an effort to focus. He’s still in his dad’s office, but he’s not alone anymore. Two people are staring down at him—a redheaded, frecklefaced man and a woman with short black hair and a scar on her cheek—and they both look pretty angry. Well, at least the woman does. The man looks like he’s not really one for confrontations.

After a few seconds of the three of them staring at each other expectantly, Soren realizes that they’re probably waiting on him for some kind of answer. “Um,” he says. “What is happening right now?”

The woman gestures something—is it a rude gesture? Even if it is, he’s too hungover to be insulted—and the man says, “I’m General Amaya.”

General—oh. _Oh_ , right. The thing he’d promised Claudia he’d do. The favor while she went to go and get their dad. Where is his sister, anyway? She always manages to find their dad faster than he does. Still, he figures he can be semi-diplomatic while he waits for them to show up, so he says to the man, “You’re General Amaya?”

The man looks taken aback, as does the woman. She starts gesturing again, and the man says, “No, _I’m_ General Amaya.”

Ooooookay. Well, that clears things up. Soren doesn’t know if it’s the hangover or the lack of sleep but he seriously has no idea what is going on here. Is the man General Amaya or isn’t he? And why is the woman looking at Soren the way his father does after he makes stupid jokes at dinner? “Help me, ‘cause I...I don’t…”

The woman tips her head back like she’s looking for help from above. Soren can relate. The man snorts and steps forward. “ _She_ is General Amaya,” he explains, pointing at her with the air of a parent explaining why one and one made two. “I’m Commander Gren, her interpreter.”

Interpreter? Why would— _oh_. Soren fights the urge to facepalm as a wave of understanding finally washes over him. The woman is deaf, and the man translates her angry gestures—not insults, but sign language—into words. “Oh,” he says stupidly. “Oh, okay. I’m Soren.”

“You’re Lord Viren’s son?”

“Yeah.” He sits up straighter in his chair. He’d been hoping that the general knew who he was because of his prowess in knight training or because he was in charge of training Prince Callum (even if said prince was more interested in drawing pictures than drawing his sword in battle), but being known because of his father isn’t that bad. “And...you’re General Amaya.”

“What were you expecting?”

“...a man.” God, he hopes he doesn’t get relegated to stable duty for saying that.

Thankfully, General Amaya just looks amused. Or at least her interpreter does. The general looks as stoic as ever as she gestures to herself. “I’m a woman.”

As idiotic as he’s aware his next sentence is going to sound, Soren needs to clarify exactly what’s going on before he continues. “You’re the head of the Katolis military?” And—oops. That hadn’t come out exactly like he’d wanted it to. “Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that. Women are cool and the military’s cool and a woman leading the military is just—cool. Very cool. It’s cool.”

General Amaya raises her eyebrows so high that they almost disappear underneath her bangs, and Commander Gren does not look impressed. The general starts signing again, this time faster than before, and Soren admires the fact that the commander can translate without skipping a beat. “Yes. Anyway. I have three different sources, one from the Breach and two from the...”  

Soren, who’d been in the middle of standing up from his chair so he could look the soldiers in the eye, stops, wondering why the general had stopped. “Everything okay?”

General Amaya signs something, and Commander Gren says, “Why are you wearing pajamas?”

“Me?” He’d have to be dumb to misunderstand the firm nods they give him, and he looks down at his dragon-print jammies with a wince. His head feels ready to split open, and all he wants to do is curl up in bed underneath a million blankets for the next century. Who invented cactus juice anyway? They should be stabbed. Soren wants to stab them.

General Amaya clears her throat, and Commander Gren gestures at him as if to say, “Well?”

“Right. Um, because—” Wait, is he allowed to tell General Amaya that he’d been drinking? He is still underage, and even if she’s not his commanding officer, she probably has the power to dismiss him and his dad will kill him if that happens. Maybe he can just play it off like a joke or something. “I, uh—I—tell you what, let’s…let’s just take a deep breath for a second while I try and remember, y’know, where I am right now…”

He walks around the desk, and the general covers her nose. “Are you drunk?”

Well, so much for that idea. Giving them both a sheepish grin, he mumbles, “I have a very delicate system.”

General Amaya just sighs like the weight of the world rests personally on her shoulders—which, he supposes, as the head general of the Katolis military, it kind of does. She begins to sign, and Gren begins translating at once. “Okay, look, I’m being perfectly serious about this. Ever since the egg was destroyed, there has been more danger around our borders than ever, and I want to know why your father is trying to convince King Harrow that his studies need more funding than the military.”

Just as Soren is trying to decide how to respond to that, there’s a knock on the door. Commander Gren turns around, followed by General Amaya and Soren, who almost cries tears of relief to see his sister and father standing in the doorway. “Hi,” Claudia says cheerfully. “What’s going on?”

“General Amaya, Commander Gren,” Soren says, “this is my sister Claudia. Claudia, this is General Amaya and her interpreter Commander Gren.”

Claudia waves, and Viren steps into the room, easily slipping into what Soren likes to call his smooth politician mode. “General Amaya, I apologize for being so late. Soren, Claudia, you may go.”

Thank the deities. Soren practically flies out of the room, managing to get halfway down the hall by the time Commander Gren finishes saying, “If we could get down to business?”

Claudia catches up to him right away, and Soren glares at her as best as he can around his headache. “Well, that took you long enough.”

Claudia doesn't look remotely apologetic. Then again, he should’ve expected as much from his annoying younger sister. “They were making jelly tarts in the kitchen and I got distracted.”

Sure enough, there are jelly stains on her robes. Probably persimmon. Soren wonders if Prince Ezran and Bait had been down there with Claudia, all three of them stuffing their mouths full of pastry while he’d been getting humiliated upstairs. She owes him big-time. Big enough to manipulate the laws of magic and invent something to cure his hangover. “Do you have any idea how dumb I looked in there?”

“No more than usual, I bet.” Soren sticks his tongue out at her, and Claudia does the same. Then her mischievous expression turns thoughtful. “So the head general is a woman.”

“Yep.”

“And she’s deaf.”

“Yep.”

Claudia nods decisively. “Cool.”


End file.
